Maps for MWIF

[c92nichj]

ORIGINAL: Caranorn

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

How do you-all feel about placing something up in the northern reaches of Siberia - far away from any possible source of supply (and therefore movement and combat)? I have this vague sense that a Terrain Effects Chart should be on land.

Sounds good to me, as long as no sensible player would ever think of ending up with troops up there.

I wouldn't mind having nice graphics there (some tanks in frozen mud comes to mind), but I don't see a reason to have charts and other info that you need to reference on the map.
On a paper game sure there space is limited, but in a computergame I cannot really see why you would print charts on the map, they would be much better to get using the help menu.

[Froonp]

My darling wife asked if there were going to be compass roses in the empty sea areas (the old fashioned N-S-E-W compasses like on maps of the 17th century). That raises some interesting alternative possibilities too. A lot of the sea hexes are unimportant - large swatches of them - and some artwork could be placed there. Suggestions?

Tell your darling wife that we also need to see all those little hexdots that are in the sea. They allow us to count the ranges for our darling planes enroute to our bad enemies [:D].
So please, put any artwork that you want at sea, but let the hexdots be visible.
Those compasses you describes are good ideas as some others I read here too, but please leave the hexdots visible. Put the art on the background.
Will there be different graphics for the seas under the different weathers ? Would be pretty too.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: c92nichj
I wouldn't mind having nice graphics there (some tanks in frozen mud comes to mind), but I don't see a reason to have charts and other info that you need to reference on the map.
On a paper game sure there space is limited, but in a computergame I cannot really see why you would print charts on the map, they would be much better to get using the help menu.

It has to do with knowledge of how to acquire information and the requisite keystrokes/mouse clicks.

When you have a good undestanding of how the help menu provides information, and assuming it does so with a minimum of fuss and bother, that is the place to get charts et al. Actually, CWIF had a drop down list of "Information" which seems like a good idea to keep fpr MWIF.

However, when you are new to software, solving the problem of how to get help can be harder than the original problem you are trying to solve. Personally, I have a going in expectation that any help system will provide me with zero help, just 10 - 15 minutes of additional frustration, until I give up on it. Going to the help menu is a last resort.

So, having some commonly needed information placed on the map, positions it where even new players (first time looking at the game) are likely to come across it, and know where to look if they what to examine it in the future. It can also serve as a subtle attempt to get the players interested in the underlying tables and charts that drive movement and combat - get them to go read up on the rules.

[Froonp]

* Terrain Effects Chart

I'd prefer to have it in a menu.

* A diagram explaining the little colored lights at the top of units (uh... which one means unsupplied?)

Same. In a menu.

* An autographed picture of Steve getting a hole-in-one.

This is a must. You must have some eastern eggs hidden in the program.

For example, do you know that there are easter eggs on the SiF counters ships silhouettes ?
Tom Cleaveland listed them nearly 6 years ago :

In extremely small type on three of the ship silhouettes are the following bits of text (expand to 1600% to see):
CV Midway: "Perrettus Maximus"
CV Enterprise: "Lance - Semper Fi"
BB Montana: "Neil's BFG"
BB Vittorio Veneto: "Beth Queman"
BB Littorio: "Leilani"
BB Impero: "Jack Greene"
BB Girg. Averoff (Greek): "Belisarius"
0.10.0.0.3.2 CW Transport: "Holy Grail"
CV Indefatiguable: "BGS Lotus"
CV Ark Royal: "Anyway Amigo..."
BB Lion: "Nich Hills"
BB Hood: "Rick"
BB Bismarck: "ScheissBvB"
BB Scharnhorst: "Lerch"
CV Graf Zeppelin: "KaiservonMartin"
BB Yamato: "GPO1" (on the bow instead of the stern)
BB Musashi: "Haku-shi"
BB October Revolution: "Comrade Spencer"

This is visible on the PDF countersheets provided n the WiF Companion CD, at 1600% zoom.

Look :

[Froonp]

Perhaps something cicra WW II?

Maybe navigation instruments used in WWII, as you can see them on a navigation tables of the warships & subs of the time.

[Froonp]

How do you-all feel about placing something up in the northern reaches of Siberia - far away from any possible source of supply (and therefore movement and combat)? I have this vague sense that a Terrain Effects Chart should be on land.

Well, scrolling to siberia to read it would be a pain in the ...
Edit : Moreover, if one day the chart changes a little, and that it is changed in the game, there is 90% chances that the graphic is not changed (forgotten or too hard to change) and that it will be wrong.

I'd prefer if there were a couple of tiny humorous graphics in those remote areas. A Polar bear chasing a russian Soldier ?

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

My darling wife asked if there were going to be compass roses in the empty sea areas (the old fashioned N-S-E-W compasses like on maps of the 17th century). That raises some interesting alternative possibilities too. A lot of the sea hexes are unimportant - large swatches of them - and some artwork could be placed there. Suggestions?

Tell your darling wife that we also need to see all those little hexdots that are in the sea. They allow us to count the ranges for our darling planes enroute to our bad enemies [:D].
So please, put any artwork that you want at sea, but let the hexdots be visible.
Those compasses you describes are good ideas as some others I read here too, but please leave the hexdots visible. Put the art on the background.
Will there be different graphics for the seas under the different weathers ? Would be pretty too.

I was thinking of the Amundsen Sea, Ross Sea, , Southwest Pacific, South Atlantic, South Indian Ocean, West Southern Ocean, Southwest Indian Ocean (far southern part), and Cape Novegia. Essentially, the sea areas at the bottom of the map. Though some of the long range, extended range air units can reach the sea dots in those areas, they are unlikely to be coming in from the south or passing through. Keeping the top couple of rows of sea dots clear is all that is needed for game play.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

How do you-all feel about placing something up in the northern reaches of Siberia - far away from any possible source of supply (and therefore movement and combat)? I have this vague sense that a Terrain Effects Chart should be on land.

Well, scrolling to siberia to read it would be a pain in the ...
Edit : Moreover, if one day the chart changes a little, and that it is changed in the game, there is 90% chances that the graphic is not changed (forgotten or too hard to change) and that it will be wrong.

I'd prefer if there were a couple of tiny humorous graphics in those remote areas. A Polar bear chasing a russian Soldier ?

With the global map displayed, it is only a single click away. I also intend to have map views that the player can save and jump to with a single mouse click('favorites' if you will).

Chasing a German soldier might be better?

Easter eggs are even farther down on my list of priorities than most things.

The reason I am thinking about adding the odd graphic to the map is that there are going to be some graphics for the opening screens (when the program in installed, executed for the first time). My thought was to take copies of them and place them about on the map. It bothers me that the opening screens usually only get seen a couple of times and then disappear from the player's view forever - a waste of artwork.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

Perhaps something cicra WW II?

Maybe navigation instruments used in WWII, as you can see them on a navigation tables of the warships & subs of the time.

Sounds good.

Navigation charts .. another possibility.

[Ballista]

ORIGINAL: Caranorn

ORIGINAL: Ballista

Please don't deface any part of the land map with any charts (or at least make them toggle-able). I guess I'm a map purist, but if it can be moved on (even if you get flipped every turn) it should not be blocked at all. I hated board games that defaced the land map with charts. As for the sea areas, chart them up as much as desired

It's not always that easy, I'm currently preparing a board game map and there is one area that is really unecessary for game play and badly documented (all the old maps leave that area blank as nothing happened there), so I will use that space to place some map related charts or the turn track. While a fully drawn map would look great it'd be neither necessary nor feasible in this case.

Easily understandable. And for a paper map considerably so. I just want to move my 3-3's around the edge of the 100+ attrition column.... (WARNING obscure TR reference)... [:)]

[Greyshaft]

How about displaying the site of historical naval battles, sub sinkings etc?
When I finished the HQ leader biographies and have tidied up the sixteen incomplete air units then I can fit the sub histories and locations in between writing up the land units and doing the ship descriptions

Maybe I'll just vote for the the compass rose...

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Greyshaft

How about displaying the site of historical naval battles, sub sinkings etc?
When I finished the HQ leader biographies and have tidied up the sixteen incomplete air units then I can fit the sub histories and locations in between writing up the land units and doing the ship descriptions

Maybe I'll just vote for the the compass rose...

Or perhaps document where every torpedo was fired during WW II (whether it went left, right, under, or on target). I mention this, because at Narvik there were a lot of torpedoes fired that never got to the proper depth. The "targets" never even knew they had been fired upon. Then not again, you could spend time with your son.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Ok. There rivers are in. This wasn't easy. I thought that the coastal hexes numbering around 5100 bitmaps were a lot, but there are over 7000 hexes with either river or lake hexsides. Just throwing them in as bitmaps is beyond the resources of the XP operating system. A bunch of technical details could be added here ...

The upshot is that the rivers match the WIF FE maps. If you look at Stettin you will notice that the river abruptly stop before it reaches the Baltic. That is how it should be, because the hexside to Stettin's east should be all sea. The river must not be part of that hexside. Of course, the artist has to fix this so that the Baltic extends down to the river. [But not the river up to the Baltic.]

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Here is Spain with pretty rivers.

The artist is working on the icons. I have seen the his first pass at them and he and I will probably reach agreement next week. At which point I'll post them and see what the WIF world at large thinks (that's you!).

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Warsaw and Lodz. I still need to rearrange some of these names and icons.

I also have the lake hexsides being superimposed over the new pretty lake hexsides. I'll take them out tomorrow (maybe late tonight) and then post what Lenigrad and Moscow look like.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

One of the problems I ran into when doing the rivers on the fly (they are added to the top of the other terrain as the screen is being drawn), is refresh speed.

It's fine at higher levels of resolution (4 to 8) but at the lower levels you can see the screen refresh. The refresh rate for a full screen at zoom level 2 is less than a second, but that is with my machine at 2.53 GHz. Once I have everything running smoothly and checked out, I'll investigate where the CPU cycles are been consumed and see what I can do about speeding things up. Also, looking at desert terrain is blazing fast, because there are no rivers there. Go Rommel!

Here's northern France with Belgium.

[c92nichj]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

One of the problems I ran into when doing the rivers on the fly (they are added to the top of the other terrain as the screen is being drawn), is refresh speed.

It's fine at higher levels of resolution (4 to 8) but at the lower levels you can see the screen refresh. The refresh rate for a full screen at zoom level 2 is less than a second, but that is with my machine at 2.53 GHz. Once I have everything running smoothly and checked out, I'll investigate where the CPU cycles are been consumed and see what I can do about speeding things up. Also, looking at desert terrain is blazing fast, because there are no rivers there. Go Rommel!

Here's northern France with Belgium.

Maybe too early for those comments, but cannot help but noticing.
St-Malo have a fair bit of bridges tunnels around it.
The hexside betwen Amsterdam and the Dutch resource looks a little bit strange
Does the refreshrate of the screen make scrolling the map difficult?

[Caranorn]

Wow, these are starting to look really great. At first I didn't like how rivers are relatively far from the hexsides (and thereby located within hexes in many cases), but at the lower zoom levels it becomes less of an issue (it's a visual issue only anyhow).

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: c92nichj

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

One of the problems I ran into when doing the rivers on the fly (they are added to the top of the other terrain as the screen is being drawn), is refresh speed.

It's fine at higher levels of resolution (4 to 8) but at the lower levels you can see the screen refresh. The refresh rate for a full screen at zoom level 2 is less than a second, but that is with my machine at 2.53 GHz. Once I have everything running smoothly and checked out, I'll investigate where the CPU cycles are been consumed and see what I can do about speeding things up. Also, looking at desert terrain is blazing fast, because there are no rivers there. Go Rommel!

Here's northern France with Belgium.

Maybe too early for those comments, but cannot help but noticing.
St-Malo have a fair bit of bridges tunnels around it.
The hexside betwen Amsterdam and the Dutch resource looks a little bit strange
Does the refreshrate of the screen make scrolling the map difficult?

I post these so I can get comments from people.

The cure for the St Malo area (planned but not coded) are:
1 - reposition St Malo to clock position 4 (it is now at 3).
2 - enable fixed positions for target points with a hex with no icons. This would be applied to the hexes left and right of St Malo. The one on the left would be moved up (right now it is terrified by the water) so the zigzag is removed. The one on the right would be moved away from the water. Right now it is not afraid of the water because there is no all sea hexside in its hex. Instead it is moving towards the water to smooth the transition between St Malo and Cherbourg. By forcing it to go to a target point at the 5 o'clock position, all should be well.
3 - I still want to smooth out the rail lines so there is less jaggedness to them.

Amsterdam has a lake to its east. What you see there is a remnant of CWIF - lake hexside. I have to correct the logic so it only displays the old style rivers and lakes when the new bitmaps haven't been added yet. I have done that for the coastlines. While the map is being completed a hybrid system will exist. Once all the bitmaps are done for the whole world, I'll eliminate the old code completely.

Refresh rate - Hey I just became aware of the problem 12 hours ago.[:(] Give me a break.[;)] I had 3 ideas for improving it when I got up this morning. [>:] If after a week it is still noticeable, then I'll start to worry.[&:] I write this stuff pretty close to stream of consciousness - I like to keep the people who bother to read this thread informed about the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

[JanSorensen]

You probably also need to reposition the ports in Antwerp, Rotherdam and Rouen within their respective hexes so the port symbols are on the coast rather than in the ocean.